


Like a second skeleton

by metonymy



Series: Boys in Black and Blue [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: AU, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:19:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham is healing, and John Blake has been left with a legacy. Nothing in his life seems to fit quite right: not the suit he's been left, not his new role with the Wayne Home for Children, and certainly not Jim Gordon's daughter. But if he wants to make it through this, he's going to have to learn how to balance them all and find his own way of being a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a second skeleton

**Author's Note:**

> This fic works off the premise that Jim Gordon's unnamed daughter from The Dark Knight was in fact Barbara. I've tinkered with ages a little here, but that's about it. A thousand thanks to @momebie for being amazing, and to @alierakieron for faithful beta services. Title from Fiona Apple's "Every Single Night."

The city is beginning to heal after the long months under siege, the gaping holes in the pavement excavated of the unfortunates hidden in death and filled in with concrete that's free of explosives this time. The bridges are stitched back together and the ferries return to normal schedules. Memorials go up beyond the statue of the Batman in City Hall, for the hundreds that are merely dead instead of transubstantiated into legend. Neighborhoods are emptier, people seizing this chance to get the hell out of a city that seems cursed at times. But some of them stick it out. They talk about generations born and raised in the same house, immigrants making a new life, roots that dig deep into the city. John doesn't feel that ancestral connection himself, doesn't love this shithole city that's more dark underbelly than pretty public face. He's tied to the city in a different way. It is the crucible that made him who he is, the harrowing of Hell as the Batman dragged that bomb out into the bay and sacrificed himself to set the city free. There was a time he could have left. But that was before he walked up to the front door of the manor and demanded to be let in.

So John stays. He takes a new job with the rechristened Wayne Home for Children; he's got to do something now that he's not on the force, and they welcome his help. It's a goddamned palace compared to St. Swithin's narrow stairs and linoleum.

Of course, it also gives him an excuse to head out of the city where the trees start to outnumber the buildings and the manor broods on a hill, and circle around to the waterfall and the caves and the secrets they hold. The first time he's just fumbling around in the dark - he'll have to get some of those lights the utilities companies use for night work, he figures, but in the meantime he has his lanterns and lamps. And while the bag included a map up to the waterfall, he doesn't have a map for the caves. He wanders the place and can feel the oppressive weight of the rock overhead, the silence of water and the secrets he knows it holds.

He comes up to the house one morning to find Alfred there, looking somehow younger than he did the last time John saw him at the funeral.

"Good morning, Mr. Blake," he says, and John nods.

"Mr. Pennyworth. What brings you out here?"

"I'm told you're the man to see about the house." They're making some minor alterations to the house; enormous and lavish are all well and good for one rich and lonely scion, but a home full of children is going to need more bathrooms and fewer drawing rooms, and the city has to make sure everything's up to code. Somehow John's in charge even though he knows less about building codes than city planning. But he has time, and no daily responsibilities with the kids.

"If that's what they told you, then I guess I am. How can I help?" Still falling into those old patterns of service, even when he's not beholden to the public and wears no badge.

They end up walking into the house as Alfred talks, voices echoing in the entrance hall. They'll have to put new treads on the staircase, or carpet it. The marble and parquet floors might have to go too. "I don't know how much you know about the history of this house, but it's over two hundred years old. The grounds stretch over a series of caves. Never anything that put the house in danger, of course, but... for the children's safety, of course, you understand."

John can feel his nerve endings lighting up and wonders if Alfred can see the excitement. "Caves. How far do those run?"

Alfred looks as if he would like to look uncomfortable if he hadn't had so much practice at not betraying his emotions. "There used to be an ingress in an old well, but that was closed up years ago. When Master Bruce..." He pauses for a moment, swallows, then goes on. "He fell in, as a child. It was sealed after that." Another piece of the puzzle that was Bruce Wayne falling into place; John imagines a child, falling into a cavern, greeted by rustling wings and chittering teeth. "But there's also an entrance from the house. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad, we thought."

By now they've gone to the drawing room where the grand piano still sits. They might keep it in case any of the children wants to play, though it'll probably end up kicked out of tune in under a week. Alfred lifts the cover over the keyboard and hits three chords, and before they're done jangling in John's ears one of the bookcases is fucking moving. "You'll want to disconnect that before the boys move in," Alfred is saying, and all John can think is that there was an easy way in this whole time.

"How does it work?" He can't hide the excitement in his voice and Alfred turns and looks at him with eyes that are unfathomably sad.

"Oh, Mister Blake. He didn't tell _you,_ did he?" And John can't even get mad; it's not about whether he's worthy, it's about that secret and the weight it carries.

"It was - he left directions, in the will. The waterfall." He's aware that he's stumbling over his words, that he's not making sense, and Alfred shakes his head.

"On your own head be it, then." And he shows John the old-fashioned elevator and together they disconnect the mechanism from the piano. For a moment, when they've swiveled the bookcase back into place, John wants to ask - for help. For permission, maybe. For absolution, even though he hasn't really done anything, not yet. But Alfred looks at him levelly and sighs and shakes his hand.

"Good luck, Mr. Blake. You're going to need it."

Once getting into the caves doesn't require abseiling down through a waterfall, John starts spending a lot more time down there. There's actual lighting as well, revealing some of those secrets he thought would be much harder to uncover. The first time he finds the button that makes the case rise out of the floor with the suit inside he stumbles back, bumping hard against the brick wall. It's like a ghost, a specter of what's been left behind and what he's fumbling towards. So that sits and waits while he keeps exploring, sifting through the banks of tools and equipment and smoke bombs and miniature grenades. There's the space where the tank must have been, that vehicle that moved faster than it should have been able, and a motorcycle with enormous tires and almost no body. Even though he's taken a few spins on bikes in his time, John's not sure he can drive that without killing himself quickly. He finds that the computer systems are extensive and all coded to let him in, with access to a truly staggering amount of information - if he were still on the GCPD payroll he might let them know how badly they need to upgrade their security. And that makes him uncomfortable in a way he doesn't like to think about too hard. It isn't that long since he went through the police academy and had all the various rights drilled into his head, Miranda and everything after, and now he's just a private citizen. Wayne was a civilian. How the hell did he get this access, and while John doesn't think he ever would have abused this information it's all too easy to see how he could have.

In the meantime, instead of wrestling with his conscience, he starts working out. The Batman didn't just loom around on rooftops, he was a hand-to-hand fighter, and the criminals feared that. So John figures he's got a lot to learn. He was a good cop, went to the gym, didn't let himself get soft around the middle, but knowing how to throw a punch and a little treadmill running won't measure up. He starts taking classes: Krav Maga, kickboxing, mixed martial arts, whatever sounds good. John can remember the fake Batmen, guys in hockey pads who wanted to dish out a little pain on their own. He can't do the same. He's got to be better than them. He has a legacy to uphold. That and his new responsibilities at the Wayne Home keep him busy, too busy to think about that suit in the caves. Sometimes he thinks about moving in - but there's not really room, the space given over to the boys and the Fathers. Besides, he can't let himself get too wrapped up in the kids. Not when he has this task ahead of him.

One evening between his daily arguments with contractors and a motorcycle driving class John heads out to his favorite diner, eager for a break from the muscle-building diet he's trying out. He isn't expecting to hear his name called out in gruff tones, a familiar voice that still makes his shoulders drop and his spine straighten out as he spins around. And there's that mustache under the enormous glasses, face creasing into a smile John never saw in those days on the force. He hasn't exactly stayed in touch with the Commissioner since he quit. They weren't friends to begin with; they were superior and subordinate, then comrades in a strange guerilla war against incomprehensible terrorists. But apparently that's close enough to friendship to greet each other in a diner on a perfectly ordinary post-war evening.

"Evening, sir." John walks over to the booth, where Gordon sits with a young woman over half-cleaned plates.

Gordon shakes his head. "You don't work for me anymore, Blake, you can cut that right out. How are you?"

"Fine," he says, with a momentary hitch as he cuts off the _sir_ that wants to append itself. He glances from Gordon to his companion, cataloguing the features - auburn hair, blue-green eyes that are watching him with interest, no makeup, a heart-shaped face and a chin that looks every bit as stubborn as Gordon's.

"This is my daughter, Barbara. She's starting at Gotham State in the fall. Library science. Babs, this is John Blake. Used to work on the force." Gordon's magnanimity is tinged with caution; how can they possibly encompass Bane's takeover in a pat introduction? John extends his hand and Barbara takes it, shakes it with a firm squeeze that is definitely not ladylike.

"Nice to meet you," she says.

"We used to come here all the time," Gordon says, looking at his daughter with mingled pride and sorrow. His wife took off with the kids, John remembers. An old story, for cops, though usually it involves fewer psychopaths threatening the life of one child. "Babs loved the lemon meringue pie."

"I still do, Dad," she says gently, slowly. She's hard to read, her face reflecting in her father's glasses, years of separation papered over with flimsy gestures of solace.

"Don't let me keep you from your favorite dessert," John says, smiling to draw their attention. Gordon looks like he's about to invite him to pull up a chair, but John's already backing away, and Barbara gives him another one of those measuring looks as if she can read his face as easily as he's read hers.

"It was nice to meet you," she says again, and he nods. And doesn't think anything of it, as he goes home and makes himself another chicken breast.

The new mechanism for the secret passageway is a lot less complicated than a piano, and less likely to be accidentally triggered by the kids. John hasn't quite figured out how he's going to sneak in and out without anybody noticing, though; late-night visits, he figures, and getting the Fathers accustomed to having him around at odd hours. It's not like he ever really fit in with their expectations before, anyway. He remembers being a hellion, full of rage and hormones and stupidity, getting in fights and getting in trouble and doing stupid shit for older boys who had nobody's best interests at heart. Long nights spent in beat-up cars and shithole apartments, hanging out with girls who were just as mad as he was underneath it all. He wonders what happened to them; after he got arrested for the last time, a month before he turned eighteen and got the fear of God and being charged as an adult put into him, he straightened out and went to school and followed an unwavering line to the force. None of those friends joined him. His girlfriend dumped him for becoming a bore. Some of them may have fled like so many others; some of them might have grown up into the same petty criminals they were playing at being back then. Did any of them turn into the sort of crazed maniacs that have been terrorizing Gotham, the sort that Batman had to rise against? Did any of them make it out and settle down into nice normal lives with nice normal families? The odds were against them on that one, and John certainly wouldn't put himself in that category.

It's a few days later that he sees Barbara again. She sees him first, actually, as he's browsing at the library - new paint still shiny over the scars left from the wild days of occupation - and calls his name.

"Blake, right?" she says, pushing a cart full of books ahead of her as she walks closer. "It's Barbara. Gordon."

"I remember," he answers, shifting his load to his left arm so he can shake her hand again. She squeezes it briefly, looking amused at his formality - this is a young woman, he reminds himself, not a work acquaintance even if she is Gordon's daughter. Her hair is up in a ponytail and she looks about fourteen years old. "You work here?"

"Yeah, it's a work-experience thing. But I like libraries. They're peaceful," she adds, looking past him to where the wrought iron light fixture has only recently been replaced. He's not sure if he envies her for missing the whole thing. Innocence is a scarce commodity in Gotham these days. "It's hard to imagine what happened." And then her eyes are fixed on his, commanding his attention. "Thank you," she says quietly.

"For what?" He can guess, and there's an uncomfortable lump in his throat.

"For helping my father. For saving his life. More than once."

John shrugs, feeling like he doesn't deserve the praise. He's no hero. He wonders how she knows about that; somehow he can't imagine Gordon telling her about being shot and rolling into the sewer flow to escape, but neither can he see Gordon giving his daughter access to police files. "Anybody would've done it."

"No. No, they wouldn't. They didn't." She's got him pinned with those green eyes, like a spotlight spreading his shadow onto a brick wall. "You did. And you helped save the whole city. Not anybody would have done that either."

"I did what I had to." Now he is _really_ uncomfortable, trapped by her eyes and the thrumming intensity of her voice. And he says something incredibly stupid. "Let me buy you a drink."

The tension snaps just like that, and her mouth tilts in a lopsided smile. "I'm not twenty-one yet, Detective."

"Coffee. I'm not a detective anymore."

"But you still want to take me out."

"If you'll stop complimenting me, sure."

She squints a little, like she can't figure out what he's trying to do. He's not really sure either; he hasn't asked a girl on an actual date in years, it feels like. But it's distracted her for the moment. "My shift's done in twenty minutes, if you want to hang around."

It's actually half an hour later that she joins him on the broad steps of the library, a messenger bag slung over her narrow shoulders. He shifts his books from his lap to one arm and looks up at her, the afternoon sunlight bringing out all the red in her hair. "Ready?" she asks. They don't talk much as they walk to a coffee shop nearby; it's one of those little places that's doing its best to serve the regulars who have been coming there for years and not get swallowed up by Starbucks. But they have good bagels, something he tells her as they wait in line.

"Good to know. A lot's changed." Since Bane, he thinks, but she continues as they pick up their cups and heads for a small table in the corner. "I mean, I'd visit after Mom and Dad split, but every time I came back it was like I barely figured out all the differences before it was time to leave again."

"You only came back once a year?" Family court wasn't his specialty. And this is probably the worst thing to be talking about first in a conversation with a girl you don't know very well.

"Turns out you can make a pretty good argument against joint custody when there's a hostage situation involved." The words come out flat and harsh. Who the anger is directed at, though, he couldn't say.

"You don't sound very upset about it."

Barbara shrugs. "It happened. I went to therapy and drew a lot of pictures of a scary man with half a face and a weirdo dressed like a bat." Hearing Bruce described that way isn't new, but it makes John flinch a little now. What exactly is he taking on? But Barbara is still talking. "I took a lot of self-defense classes, then martial arts. My coach didn't like that much."

"Coach?"

"Gymnastics. Not good enough to go pro, but good enough for state championships." She isn't self-deprecating or arrogant, just stating the facts.

"So if you're not twenty-one, how are you done with college?"

"Mom homeschooled us for a while, after we moved. I skipped a few grades."

And John only ever got an A.A., and that after he spent some time floating around and raising hell and generally living up to the worst possible outcome of the legacy his father left. That's a little personal for the first date, though. If this is a date. Instead he starts talking about the police academy and how he got some terrible nicknames from it. Talking to her is easier than he expects; she's quick like her father but good at listening, her whole body turned toward him as if nothing matters more than whatever he's saying at that particular moment. It's entirely too easy to just talk with her, carry on a conversation in ways he hasn't in ages. They start talking about classic rock and debating whether The Who's concept albums can be compared at all to Bowie's various poses and he only realizes how long they've been sitting there when Barbara suddenly frowns and digs in her pocket and pulls out her phone.

His coffee is cold when he takes a swallow, and he winces as she speaks into the phone with clipped sentences and brief apologies. "Sorry about that," she says, rolling her eyes a little. "Dad forgets sometimes that I'm not a little kid anymore." And it's almost totally dark out there now.

"No, I - it's late, I shouldn't have talked your ear off."

She smiles. "Hardly. It was nice to have someone to talk with outside of work." For a moment he can see that she's lonely too, even if she has got her father - colleagues at work aren't a real substitute for connection. He knows that better than anybody. Barbara picks up her bag and stands, and he hastily gets to his feet. Before he can decide whether to offer his hand again - stupid, he's like some robot that's got the wrong programming - she touches his arm lightly. "Thanks for the coffee. I'll see you around?"

He nods, and she's gone. It's only when he's halfway home that he realizes he's still smiling.

John's used to time passing slowly, days falling one after another with regular plodding pace. During the occupation that slowed to a crawl - every day a series of held breaths and balancing acts. But now he'll look up from perusing the files on the computer and realize it's two in the morning and he hasn't eaten since lunch. Bats are nocturnal, he thinks to himself, and almost laughs. He doesn't have time to catch up on sleep during the day; there are contractors to oversee, to make sure they don't find anything they're not supposed to, to make sure this goes from a house with something wrong inside to a home for kids who've done nothing wrong except have shitty luck. But it all gets done and he drinks pot after pot of bitter black coffee and keeps all the pieces in order.

When the kids finally move in, pouring off the buses in a wave of sneakers and shouting, it's like the whole building shudders and breathes in. John walks through with the fathers, carrying bags and boxes, and listens to the kids stake their claims and bounce on beds and thunder up and down staircases like miniature elephants. He wonders when was the last time these halls heard this much noise and laughter, if ever. He still sees the anger and the pain in the children's eyes, remembers telling Bruce about feeling angry down to your bones and knows the kids feel that too. But they have space here, and light, and new clothes, and they're a little less like someone's castoffs that don't fit in anywhere. It's tempting to tell himself that he's done, that this is enough, that he can put down that load. When he starts to think about that, though, he can feel something seizing up at the back of his throat, molars grinding together in revulsion.

So he heads back into the caves after everyone's gone to sleep, a small flashlight to help him down through the elevator and into the darkness. There are files upon files to sift through and memorize, connections to make, criminals to track, techniques to master. Sometimes he thinks this is only a distraction, stalling for time, burying more and more layers over the anger that's become a part of every cell of his body. Layers of dirt over the empty coffin in the plot out back, the place the younger boys avoid, the place they're carefully taught to respect rather than fear. Their benefactors. Bruce Wayne: one more failed mentor, one more body in the ground. He pulls the case up and looks at the suit almost every day; he's even opened it up, the faint hiss nearly lost in the noise of the water, but he hasn't been able to bring himself to try it on. Bruce Wayne is dead and there's a statue of him in City Hall and John has a legacy and no idea how he can measure up.

He finds himself going to the library again, more than he would otherwise - the main branch instead of the little one by his apartment - and it takes a while before he stops pretending to himself that reading up on Gotham history and BASE jumping has anything to do with why he's here. And then, when he's finally admitted that he might like to see Barbara again, he gets a phone call.

"I don't remember giving you my number," he says after she says hello and introduces herself again.

"I have my ways," Barbara answers, and he can almost picture that smile on her face.

"I haven't seen you at the library." Smooth. A great opener.

"My schedule changed around now that classes have started," she says. No accusations of stalking, so that's a plus. "Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to maybe get dinner sometime? You're like the only person I know besides my dad who isn't freaking out about memorizing cataloguing systems."

"Sure," he answers without thinking about it, and they pick a time and a place and he hangs up the phone and wonders what the hell he's gotten himself into. She's the Commissioner's daughter, he quit the force, she's younger - and she asked him out, he reminds himself, so the overthinking part of his brain can shut the hell up.

He tries not to plan too much or think too hard about it before the date - if it is a date - and shows up wearing his usual dark trousers and sweater. But she's only wearing jeans and an oversized sweater of her own, and settles into the booth at the pub with ease. Conversation is a little stilted at first; he realizes that he's giving monosyllabic answers to her questions, but he's not used to opening up about himself.

"You're so secretive," she says, propping her chin in her hand.

"Not really," he protests. He's not a very good liar, he never has been; it's one of the reasons he decided to become a cop instead of a criminal.

"Then tell me something. Before I use my librarian superpowers to dig up your entire background."

"John isn't my real name," he says, after consideration. Her eyes sparkle.

"Oh, that is better than I expected. Alias? Witness protection?"

"No. All right, it is, it's just not my first name."

"What is?"

"Robin."

She doesn't laugh, just smiles more broadly, smooth as cream. "Robin Blake. I like it."

"Yeah, you and my mother and no one else." Immediately he regrets bringing her up, because that means questions, which means giving answers, which means sickly sweet sympathy and being unable to finish his dinner and a wall erected between them. He feels that cold weight settle over him, on his shoulders, in the pit of his stomach.

"Well, I won't use it if you don't like it. Unless you're misbehaving." John looks up to see Barbara sipping her water, eyes dancing. He exhales the panic on a long breath and lifts his own glass and takes a hasty drink, and then he asks her about her gymnastics training. After that he can feel himself relaxing, having an actual conversation that goes back and forth and branches naturally; she's more than happy to talk about school, but she's good at asking questions and listening to the answers too. Briefly he thinks that she would've been good at interviewing witnesses and suspects, but the very idea would probably give her father a coronary. So instead he focuses on what's right in front of him and acting like a normal human being who isn't carrying around secrets and anger. At least, not more so than anybody else in Gotham.

Considering that he hasn't been on a real date in years, it goes well. Really well. She tells him she caught a bus down here and he offers to drive her home, and as they're walking down to his car she takes his hand and it feels completely natural there. As he drives she switches on the radio and settles on the oldies station.

"You're humming," she says after a minute.

"What?"

"No, don't stop. Do you sing?"

"What, you think orphan boys always end up in a choir?" And he hasn't joked about that in years, maybe ever. Her laugh sounds as surprised as he feels.

When they pull up in front of Gordon's house, he turns off the radio and there's a silence for a moment that's equal parts comfortable and charged. "So," he says, trying to figure out what to say.

"Thanks," Barbara says, and he turns to look at her as she's unbuckling her seatbelt. "Not just for the ride. I had a really nice time." She makes a face. "Nice. What a terrible word." He smiles, because this whole time he's felt like she knows exactly what to say, and it's a little good to see her as twisted as he's feeling.

"I had a nice time too," he says, still smiling, and then turns in his seat because she's moving towards him, and her lips land at the corner of his mouth and he was not expecting that at all. She starts to draw back but he turns his head just enough to kiss her back, and that's - that's really nice, even with her craned awkwardly over the emergency brake and one of his hands still on the steering wheel. Better than nice.

Finally she pulls back and settles into the seat again, with that same lopsided smile that's starting to make his stomach do funny things every time he sees it. "Well."

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe we can do this again." He's pretty sure he has some of her lip stuff on his face. At the moment he doesn't much care.

"Sure. I'll call you." Barbara opens the door and gets out, then leans back in, hair falling over her shoulders. "Good night, Robin." The door slams before he can say anything, and he watches her head up the steps and wonders if she'll ever let him get the last word.

Maybe that's why he goes down to the caves the next night and opens the case and, for the first time, takes out the suit. It's in more pieces than he expected somehow, and John takes them all out and lays them on the floor carefully like reconstructing a skeleton for forensics. Then he looks over them and waits and takes off his sweater and shirt. Probably Bruce had some super-thin advanced polymer fiber wicking layer that went under all this, but John just has an undershirt that came in a bag with two others, so it'll have to do. The suit smells in a way he hadn't expected, like rubber and a little bit like gasoline. And it's clear from the very first piece he tries that this isn't going to work. That the suit is too big, built for a man who was taller and broader. It would be almost ironic if John had that sort of sense of humor. But he stares at the case and shivers in the air that's always damp and cold down here, feeling silly and stupid and more than a little angry. Why the hell did Bruce leave this to him? The cowl, the helmet, it's all been molded to his face. John can't put that on without feeling like he's wearing an antique death mask. It's all wrong.

But he sucks it up and swallows back that feeling of bile and messes around with the catches that lock the various parts of the suit to each other. There's enough give in whatever Kevlar blend sits between the panels for him to wear it without it wrinkling or tripping him up, the cowl doesn't actually make his head rattle around inside like a dried pea in a cup, and the cape... well, the cape he's working on. He's afraid he's going to kill himself when he gets on that skinny low-slung motorcycle, but the cape seems to settle into rigid patterns that are well away from the rear wheel, so at least he seems unlikely to break his neck.

The road from the waterfall to downtown Gotham is familiar by now. The pod hugs the curves of the road, and he's closer to the speed-blurred asphalt than he'd like - it's lower to the ground than the bikes he'd learned on, making him lean far forward over the chassis, but so be it. He'll count the night a success if he doesn't splatter his brains over the street. The trees are whipping past at a speed that's probably unsafe, but the air against his face focuses him like a blast down his spine.

There's a radio hooked to the police scanner that squawks and crackles in his ear inside the cowl. Since Bane, since the cops came out from underground, there's been - not peace, exactly, but a wary truce. Everyone was too scarred by the near nuclear apocalypse to start a new war. But there are crooks who will never stay out of sight. The Dent act is up to be dismantled, founded on a lie. And Blackgate is still under construction. The new mayor is doing her best, but the relief money has to flow through so many channels. And she wanted the National Guard out as soon as possible. There have been enough soldiers in Gotham.

The pod is easily hidden and he takes to the rooftops. He can see more from up here, certainly, but the mask on his face blocks his peripheral vision and the suit feels heavy around him. But when he sees a gang of thugs working on the lock to the back door of an electronics store, it's all too easy to hurl a few of the little sharp-edged metal bats down. Some ping uselessly against the door; a few lodge themselves in the hands or shoulders of the criminals, and they all turn to look up at the roof next door. From here he can't hear every word they say, but he figures the silhouette of the cowl against the clouds is doing its job when they scatter.

Much of the night is spent jumping from roof to roof, gauging just how fast and far he can go in the suit, and it becomes distressingly clear that it's really not going to work. Not in this guise, not in the borrowed cowl. And it's not going to work if all he does is run around in circles hoping he finds something - patrolling didn't always mean finding a crime when he was still a beat cop, after all, and it's not like there's a hotline for citizens to call the Batman. The police had the Batsignal, but they don't know he's out here. Not yet.

Later on he's waiting, watching, trying to decide when he hears the high voice of an angry woman. He gets closer and he can hear low voices taunting her. From up here it looks like a pair of them, closing in on a lone petite woman who's backing away. There's a familiar flash of red hair and he thinks - no, it can't be her, it can't be at all. Why would she be out here this late, in this neighborhood? He's about to swoop in when there's suddenly a pair of pipes or batons or something in her hands and a series of sickening cracks evoke a chorus of moans and howls of pain. Then she's vaulting improbably _over_ the thugs and loping down the alleyway, heels clicking like she's dashing for a bus rather than running for her life. When he turns to track her she's turned the corner, and there's the brief purr of a small motor starting. It's curious, and he'd think about it more but he wants to make sure those two men have learned their lesson.

The rest of the night passes quickly; he stops a carjacking and hears the shrieks of the driver and passenger as he vanishes into the shadows and wonders if the first Batman ever had to hide and catch his breath after looking down the barrel of a shotgun. He does a lot of waiting around. And then finally around four he makes his way back to the Batpod and heads back before the sun rises and he loses his cover.

So it wasn't a wild success; he supposes he should be glad he didn't actually manage to hang himself with the cape. In fact, John's pretty sure he's never wearing the cape again. The Batman will have to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies in other ways. He places the suit back in the case and takes a deep breath for what feels like the first time in hours, shivering in his skin again, not sure whether he can put that suit on another time.

At the bottom of the plinth that holds the case, though, there's a series of thin drawers. He's expecting more weaponry but finds pieces of the suit. Backups, he supposes. John never took home ec but he can cobble something together out of these pieces, something that will fit him better. There are other things too, like an eyemask that looks like it's meant to go under the cowl; upon examination - or playing around with it - he finds that it has night vision and infrared settings, and the whole thing molds to his face and stays there with only a little pressure, seeming to suck into his skin a bit. It peels off when he slides his nails under the edges.

This, he thinks, he can work with.


End file.
